Bismark, while Chancellor had
been the genius who kept two foolish nephews of the Prince of Wales, the Russian Czar and
German Kaiser, from entangling themselves with the depraved Habsburg Kaiser, in a war in
which all three of the latter would destroy their monarchies. Once Bismark had been
ousted, World War I was inevitable.

The German Konrad Adenauer had spent much
of the war in a Nazi prison because he was suspected accurately of (anti-Hitler)
sentiments. When he became the first chancellor of the new West Germany, he felt acutely
Germany's need to express and demonstrate its remorse for what the nation had done to its
European neighbors. (The United States of Europe, p. 37)

Conflicts

Demographics

A group of German church leaders, led by
the Reverend Martin Niemoller, drew up a formal "Declaration of Guilt" in late
1945; posted and read to the congregation at churches throughout the Axis nations, it
promoted the notion that Germany and Italy must now seek reconciliation and common ground
with the countries they had attacked in the war. (The United States of Europe, p. 33)

Phillipp Jenninger, once the president of the Parliament
in the former West German Republic. Jenninger was forced to resign in November of 1988,
following a speech he gave at a special parliamentary session marking the fiftieth
anniversary of Kristallnacht. In that speech he rendered an account of events leading up
to the infamous "Night of the Broken Glass" in 1938, when German Jews were set
upon, their property destroyed and their lives taken--a night which many historians mark
as the beginning of the Holocaust. An uproar was created by the fact that many in his
audience construed Jenninger's brutally frank account of prevailing attitudes among
Germans in the 1930s as a disguised defense of National Socialism. Paradoxically, all
agreed that Jenninger had for many years been an opponent of totalitarianism of all
stripes, a fierce anti-Nazi, and an arch supporter of Israel. Thus, he was a unlikely
defender of Nazism. No one accused him of being anti-Semitic. However, even before his
speech had ended there were demonstrations of anger from some in the audience who, finding
his words profoundly offensive, rushed ashen-faced from the chamber. Yet, virtually all
reviewers who examined the speech concluded that he had said nothing untrue, malicious or
defamatory; he simply said things that some people did not want to hear in a manner that
they were unwilling to accept. The context of his remarks, and perhaps more importantly
the voice he employed during a part of the speech, made his utterances impossible for many
Germans to accept. According to one analyst, his mistake was that he had such confidence
in his reputation as a friend of Jews and of Israel that he believed he did not need to
use the subjunctive mood, or some other grammatical distancing device, when making what
would otherwise be perceived as noxious statements.